Let's imagine things turned out just a little bit differently at the
recent Ryder Cup matches.

Let's imagine that Justin Leonard missed his 45-foot putt on the seventeenth
green. No big celebration, no nothing. The ten-second huzzahs that have
so upset European team members and the utterly corrupt European sporting
press never would have occurred. Jose Maria Olazabal birdies the final
hole, Leonard misses his birdie putt, and Olazabal wins the match.

Just change that much. And watch how the attention shifts.

In the match just in front of Olazabal-Leonard, Padraig Harrington beat
Mark O'Meara. That happened; you don't have to imagine it. With that slight
change, the Ryder Cup ends up in Europe's hands, not the United States's.
O'Meara becomes the goat, instead of Leonard being the hero. Why does
O'Meara lose?

Because Padraig Harrington stalled, delayed, and fudged on every hole.
He played so slowly that he got O'Meara's goat. On the seventeenth hole,
Harrington actually paced off 150 yards to and from the green, counting
all the way, while O'Meara waited. The television coverage showed every
self-absorbed pace of that walk. "He's not an easy guy to play with,"
commented on-course announcer Mark Rolfing. O'Meara impatiently - and
unwisely - conceded Harrington a par putt for a half on the seventeenth
green. O'Meara stalked impatiently to the next tee, and hit an impatient
hook with his driver, into a bunker. From there, he lost the hole and
the match.

The rudest thing you can do on a golf course is play slowly. The European
team played at a glacial pace throughout the week, especially in team
matches. What hooting they heard from the gallery amounted mainly to one
thing: "Hit the ball, dammit!" Responding to catcalls like that,
Sergio Garcia, in the middle of a near-endless palaver with partner Jesper
Parnevik on Friday, actually sat down in the fairway.

I repeat: The rudest thing you can do on a golf course is play slowly.
The Europeans played slowly, deliberately, as they have always played
slowly, deliberately, in an attempt to unnerve the Americans. In the end,
only O'Meara succumbed.

But, with the one little change I imagine in the matches - Leonard misses
on the seventeenth - that slow play would have been enough, and it would
have worked.

Regular PGA tour events require shots to be hit within about 55 seconds
of arriving at the ball. I say, next time, let's put a clock on it.